Publications

"Ashton is a poet, writer, teacher, and editor of the DMQ Review, an online journal featuring poetry and art. She is author of Some Odd Afternoon, BlazeVOX, 2010, and a prose poem collection, Her Name Is Juanita, Kore Press, 2009. Both books received Pushcart Prize nominations. These Metallic Dayswas published in 2005 as part of Main Street Rag’s Editor’s Choice Chapbook Series. Poems also appear in An Introduction to the Prose Poem, and Breathe: 101 Contemporary Odes, as well as journals such as Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics, 5am, Mississippi Review and Poet Lore."

With the increasing globalization of culture, American literature has become a significant
body of text for classrooms outside of the United States. Bringing together essays
from a wide range of scholars in a number of countries, including China, Japan, Korea,
Singapore, and the United States, Crossing Oceans focuses on strategies for critically reading and teaching American literature, especially
ethnic American literature, within the Asia Pacific region. This book will be an important
tool for scholars and teachers from around the globe who desire fresh perspectives
on American literature from a variety of national contexts.

Lady Caroline Lamb was described by her lover, Lord Byron, as having a heart like
a “little volcano” and as “the cleverest most agreeable, absurd, amiable, perplexing,
dangerous fascinating little being that lives now or ought to have lived 2000 years
ago.” She wrote witty and revealing letters to fellow authors like Lady Morgan, William
Godwin, Robert Malthus, and Amelia Opie, and to her publishers John Murray and Henry
Colburn, to her cousins Hart, Georgiana, and Harrio, as well as to her mother, husband,
son, and lovers. In those letters she told her correspondents what she admitted was
“the whole disgraceful truth” of her drug and alcohol addictions, her affairs with
Sir Godfrey Vassal Webster, Lord Byron, and Michael Bruce, her jealousy of her cousin
Georgiana (whom William Lamb had “adored” before proposing to Caroline), but also
of her efforts to make a happy life for her mentally retarded, epileptic son, Augustus,
and her determination to become a respected writer of fiction, poetry, and songs.

Lady Caroline Lamb, among Lord Byron's many lovers, stands out—vilified, portrayed
as a self-destructive nymphomaniac—her true story has never been told. Now, Paul Douglass
provides the first unbiased treatment of a woman whose passions and independence were
incompatible with the age in which she lived. Taking into account a traumatic childhood,
Douglass explores Lamb's so-called "erotomania" and tendency towards drug abuse and
madness—problems she and Byron had in common. In this portrait, she emerges as a person
who sacrificed much for the welfare of a sick child, and became an artist in her own
right. Douglass illuminates her novels and poetry, her literary friendships, and the
lifelong support of her husband and her publisher, John Murray.

Notes of Conversations, 1848-1875 is a volume of transcripts of conversations conducted by the nineteenth-century American
philosopher and educator A. Bronson Alcott at various locations in New England and
the Midwest. The transcripts have been copied from unpublished manuscripts in the
Alcott collection at Harvard University and Concord Free Library, as well as published
contemporary articles in The Radical, New York Tribune, and Chicago Tribune. Gathered in this volume, Alcott's transcripts vividly reflect American intellectual
concerns from the years preceding the Civil War through the beginning of the Gilded
Age.

A digital rendering of textual, contextual and (select) content from several volumes
of the first British-published literary annual, Forget Me Not. This annual, published by Rudolf Ackermann & Co. 1823-1847, began the literary phenomenon
and was published annually for twenty-four consecutive years. Its longevity was rivaled
by only a few other British titles; however, many scholars overlook it (and Ackermann's)
significance to nineteenth-century popular culture, publishing trends and literary
production. This Archive provides access to both the bibliographical elements and
content of this particular annual. Full text of all volumes will be added over the
next five years.

The Forgotten Gothic: Short Stories from British Literary Annuals, 1823-1831(zittaw press, 2012) link to Amazon

This astonishing collection of 95 rare Gothic tales from British Literary Annuals
tales takes us further than perhaps eighteenth or nineteenth-century scholars are
comfortable with- to the Gothic's afterlife. Once touted as a literary "dead zone"
-the Annuals of the1820s and 30s are unexpectedly populated with dozens of terrifying
and horrific Gothic tales. A groundbreaking collection, Forgotten Gothic illustrates the continued development of the Gothic genre even after its supposed
death in 1820.

Kelly A. Harrison

In this collection, authors were challenged to tell their own true story, and tell
it in one of three ways. Three paragraphs, three haiku, or three photographs. These
artfully crafted “stories,” by writers at the cusp of recognition and fame, combine
narrative nonfiction and flash fiction to create a new genre: flash nonfiction. Written
with panache and power, the stories illustrate the genre’s potential. Intelligent,
accessible, and often poignant, this exciting array of voices is sure to impress and
delight.

West Winds Centennial(California Writers Club, 2010)

This collection of stories, memoirs, and poems by members of the California Writers
Club celebrates the clubs centennial. Founded in 1909, the CWC is one of the nation's
oldest professional club for writers. Early honorary members included Jack London,
George Sterling, John Muir, Joaquin Miller, and the first California poet laureate,
Ina Coolbrith. The first West Winds, a hardcover collection of fiction, was published in 1914 and illustrated by California
artists. This is the fifth West Winds. As a nonprofit, the CWC educates writers of all levels and disciplines in the craft
of writing and in the marketing of their work. CWC branches hold regular meetings,
workshops, and conferences with speakers and opportunities for networking with writers
and publishing professionals.

Postcolonial and the GlobalEdited by Revathi Krishnaswamy, John C. Hawley, John C. Hawley(University of Minnesota Press, 2007)

This interdisciplinary work brings the humanities and social sciences into dialogue
by examining issues such as globalized capital, discourses of antiterrorism, and identity
politics. Essayists from the fields of postcolonial studies and globalization theory
address the ethical and pragmatic ramifications of opposing interpretations of these
issues and, for the first time, seek common ground.

Effeminism: The Economy of Colonial Desire(University of Michigan Press, 1999)

A fascinating study of "the inevitable intimacy between colonizer and colonized,"
Effeminism: The Economy of Colonial Desire attempts to chart the flow of colonial desire by examining the complex encodings of
fears, fascinations, and anxieties in the works of British writers in India. The author
examines the works of Flora Annie Steel, Rudyard Kipling, and E. M. Forster, and finds
their works to be deeply implicated in the politics of colonial rule and anticolonial
resistance. Krishnaswamy refuses to characterize the colonial encounter in terms of
unchanging and monolithic Manichean oppositions, repeatedly drawing attention to fissures,
contradictions, and slippages that attend the production of English manliness and
Indian effeminacy. By restoring both the political in the unconscious and the unconscious
in the political, the book proposes to understand colonialism in terms of historical
failure, ideological inadequacy, and political contention.

Creating Another Self: Voice in Modern American Personal Poetry(Truman State UP, 2005)

Creating Another Self makes two significant literary assertions. First, that all first-person voice poetry
necessarily involves a "masking" of some kind; and second, that all personal poetry
falls into one of three masking modes: the confessional, the persona, and the self-effacing.
Samuel Maio supports these claims with an in-depth analysis of the work of representative
poets, three for each mode: Robert Lowell, James Wright, and Anne Sexton (confessional);
John Berryman, Weldon Kees, and Galway Kinnell (persona); and Mark Strand, Charles
Simic, and David Ignatow (self-effacing). Further, the book draws on the work of several
newer poets such as Garrett Hongo and Jim Barnes to suggest that personal poetry has
had a far reaching influence on 20th century poetry. A work of theoretical criticism,
and not a survey of personal poets, Creating Another Self suggests that contemporary personal poetry is a distinctive phase begun in the 1950s
and coming to a close in the 1990s. The book is an important work for scholars of
American literature and for creative writers.

Champion of Choice: The Life & Legacy of Women's Advocate Nafis Sadik(University of Nebraska Press, 2013) link to Amazon

“Miller (Desert Flower) offers an intimate, exhaustive biography of Nafis Sadik, a woman from an upper-class
Indian family who became a physician and would eventually pioneer women’s health and
welfare rights around the world.”

—Publishers Weekly

The Birdhouse Chronicles: Surviving the Joys of Country Life(Lyons Press, 2004)

In The Birdhouse Chronicles, internationally bestselling author Cathleen Miller offers a funny and wise account
of how she and her husband, Kerby, abandoned their San Francisco advertising careers
to make a radical new life for themselves in a one-hundred-year-old Pennsylvania farmhouse
located in the middle of an Amish cornpatch. Part memoir, part nature writing, and
part old-house-restoration journal, this wonderfully intimate narrative brings home
all the humor, exhilaration, and disappointment of pursuing a realer, "simpler" life
in the country. Miller sprang from a rural background, and she's run from her roots
during most of her adult life, but in Zion, Pa., she makes a gratifying, if not dubious,
peace with her past.

Wild Writing Women: Stories of World Travel is an anthology from a remarkable writers' group. The WWW - a gathering of twelve
women - travel the globe, returning as often as they can to share their tales of adventure.
Through these pages you will journey alongside each author, traveling through China
on a motorcycle, playing with fire at a volcano's edge in Hawaii, experiencing the
supernatural in Scotland, or falling in love in Moscow. Life's adventures are expressed
here with sensitivity and verve, providing a terrific read that is sure to become
a favorite of book groups, armchair travelers, and wild women everywhere.

Waris Dirie leads a double life -- by day, she is an international supermodel and
human rights ambassador for the United Nations; by night, she dreams of the simplicity
of life in her native Somalia and the family she was forced to leave behind. Desert Flower, her intimate and inspiring memoir, is a must-read for anyone who has ever wondered
about the beauty of African life, the chaotic existence of a supermodel, or the joys
of new motherhood. Desert Flower was published simultaneously in eleven languages throughout the world and is currently
being produced as a feature film by Rocket Pictures UK.

Portraits of Medieval Women: Family, Marriage and Social Relations in Thirteenth Century
England(Palgrave MacMillan, 2003)

Although numerous studies of medieval women and a number of biographies of medieval
queens and noblewomen have appeared in recent years, comparatively few studies have
sought to combine biographical and prosopographical approaches in order to develop
portraits of specific women in order to highlight different life experiences of medieval
women. The individual chapters can be read as separate histories of their specific
subjects as well as case studies which together provide a coherent picture of the
medieval English noblewoman.

Avantika Rohatgi

Global Rights and Perceptions(University Readers, 2012)

In Global Rights and Perceptions, students read from a wide variety of original sources—foreign policy journals, non-fiction
books, medical journals, and current affairs magazines on how human rights are currently
being violated through practices such as human trafficking, female genital mutilation,
organ trade, and female feticide. This varied exposure gives students several gateways
through which to approach complex social issues, think and write about them with awareness
and engagement. Based on the premise that students must be pulled away from a highly
commercial, digitally perfect present, and encouraged to intelligently and passionately
examine an imperfect world with a view to changing it, the book provides a well-rounded
education on global rights, and the lack thereof, in our modern world.

Susan Shillinglaw

A Journey into Steinbeck's California(Roaring Forties Press, 2006)

This part art book, part biography, and part travel guide offers insight into how
landscapes and townscapes influenced John Steinbeck's creative process and how, in
turn, his legacy has influenced modern California. Various types of readers will appreciate
the information in this guide, literary pilgrims will learn more about the state featured
so prominently in Steinbeck's work, tourists can visit the same buildings that he
lived in and wrote about, and historians will appreciate the engrossing perspective
on daily life in early 20th-century California. Offering an entirely new perspective
on Steinbeck and the people and places that he brought to life in his writing, readers
will find delight in this depiction of the symbiotic relationship between an author
and his favorite places.

Alan Soldofsky

In the Buddha Factory(Truman State University Press, 2013)

Alan Soldofsky’s most recent collection of poems,In the Buddha Factory, contains a series of poems written while he participated in the Zhejiang Writers
Conference in China. He has also published three chapbooks of poems:Kenora Station,Staying Home, and a chapbook that includes a selection of poems by his son, Adam Soldofsky,Holding Adam / My Father’s Books. Over the last three decades, he has published poems widely in magazines and academic
journals, most recently indecember, Poetry Flash,The Gettysburg Review,Poetry Daily,Rattle, andThe Rattling Wall. He has also been published in thePoem-a-Daydigital poetry series presented by Academy of American Poets. His criticism, interviews,
and reviews have appeared inThe Writer’s Chronicle, Narrative: The Journal of the Society for the Study of Narrative
Literature, andPoetry Flash.He is a professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at San Jose State University,
where he been on the faculty over 25 years.In 2009, he received an Artist Fellowship in Literary Arts in Poetry from Arts Council
Silicon Valley.

Nick Taylor

Led by the zealous Fray Junípero Serra to the fringes of the Spanish Empire in the
mid-1700s, Franciscan missionaries Francisco Palóu and Juan Crespí are as fervid as
their master about the opportunity posed by Alta California: to gloriously swell the
kingdom of God through conversion—consensual or forced—of the native people. As Crespí
and our sensitive but bitterly envious narrator, Palóu, vie for Serra’s fickle favor,
a chain of their newly established missions creeps north up the fog-enshrouded coast
from Mexico. A master stylist and a meticulous researcher, Nick Taylor vividly captures
the atmosphere of early California as he dramatizes the politics of the era: the horrifying
and tragic gaps in understanding between priests and natives; the vicious power plays
between crown and church; and the fervor, ambition, and desperation that fueled European
settlement of the region. This novel’s publication coincides with the celebration
of the 300th anniversary of Junípero Serra’s birth.

“In this dazzling debut novel, a young Virginia medical student must choose between
family and ambition in the crucible of the American Civil War. Author Nick Taylor
arrives on the literary scene like a cross between Stephen Crane and Scott Fitzgerald
with the sensibility of Charles Frazier. Seductive, authentic, and unforgettable,
The Disagreement is an instant classic.”

Relief pitcher/private investigator Johnny Adcock doesn’t have an office; he has the
bullpen. That’s where he meets Tiff Tate, the femme-fatale stylist responsible for
half the looks in Major League Baseball, from Brian Wilson’s beard to Big Papi’s gold
ropes. Tiff has a problem. Her new client, the rookie phenom Yonel Ruiz, has been
threatened by a cartel of smugglers. Adcock is her last best hope. As he embarks on
this potentially deadly mission, Adcock tangoes with a mysterious, sexy assassin known
only as La Loba. And he still has the playoffs to worry about.

Johnny Adcock is an aging Major League pitcher, who moonlights as a private investigator.
Major League Baseball, as it turns out, is a prime source of employment for a discreet
detective who has both the brains and the brawn to handle the unique problems of professional
athletes. On the bus after a game, teammate Frankie Herrera confides in Adcock that
he has a “problem with his wife.” It sounds like the standard story of a pro athlete’s
marriage gone sour. However, when Frankie dies in a car crash, Adcock knows there
are way too many questions still unanswered, and he dives head first into the most
dangerous investigation of his budding second career.

Mary Warner

Adolescents in the Search for Meaning: Tapping the Powerful Resource of Story(Scarecrow Press, 2006)

As is painfully evident from the reports of school shootings, gang violence, and adolescent
suicide, many teens live troubled lives. Even those who live a "normal" life are confronted
by some of the challenges adults face. However, few of them have the same resources
as adults for surviving such challenges. In addition, teens are also engaged in establishing
independence and finding their identities. Building on the idea that "story" is a
powerful source of meaning, particularly those stories that resonate with our own
lives, Mary Warner suggests that the stories of other young adults offer a resource
yet to be fully tapped. As such, readers are provided with insight into the young
adult perspective from the results of a survey of over 1400 teens and through feedback
from authors of young adult literature.

Journals

Reed Magazine: A Journal of Poetry and Prose

San Jose State University's Literary Magazine featuring submissions of original poetry
and short stories from across the nation. Reed Magazine is one of the oldest student
publications west of the Mississippi. In its earlier incarnations it was called El
Portal. Reed was first numbered by year and volume in 1946. At the time, the magazine
was put together by SJSU's literary society, Pegasus, with help from the Associated
Student Body. The magazine continues to be compiled and edited by students in the
Department of English & Comparative Literature programs.

Steinbeck Studies

Steinbeck Studies is the authorized publication on the life and works of John Steinbeck.
It publishes scholarly articles, essays, photographs, notes, book and performance
review, and contemporary references about the author. Manuscripts are subject to blind
peer review. Steinbeck Studies is issued twice yearly and includes a membership in
the Steinbeck Society. Members will be informed of panels at the American Literature
Association as well as events sponsored by the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies and the National Steinbeck Center.